I intermittently get "The recording device reported the media error: Power calibration area error.(0x73, 0x03.) Any ideas or is my burner just getting tired?
This is perhaps one of the most common issues people see burning discs.
If you're using a known good brand of blank disc - say Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim - then it may be the drive getting old.
One thing to
try is to use some compressed air or one of the commercial "lens cleaning discs" to try to clean the lens of the laser in the drive as the lasers face up (to read/write the bottom of the disc) and over time the same fans that cause the inside of your computer to get caked with dust do the same to the laser optics. I've been able to resolve several such errors by cleaning the lens but other times the laser diode and/or power supply in the drive have just weakened to the point they can no longer burn properly.
Still, since $5 for a can of compressed air or $10 for the laser cleaning disc beats the price of a new drive, it's worth a try. 😀
This is perhaps one of the most common issues people see burning discs.
If you're using a known good brand of blank disc - say Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim - then it may be the drive getting old.
One thing to
try is to use some compressed air or one of the commercial "lens cleaning discs" to try to clean the lens of the laser in the drive as the lasers face up (to read/write the bottom of the disc) and over time the same fans that cause the inside of your computer to get caked with dust do the same to the laser optics. I've been able to resolve several such errors by cleaning the lens but other times the laser diode and/or power supply in the drive have just weakened to the point they can no longer burn properly.
Still, since $5 for a can of compressed air or $10 for the laser cleaning disc beats the price of a new drive, it's worth a try. 😀
I had exactly the same issue. It was reporting a power calibration error and I had the following information in the DiskRecording.log (open Console and you fond that log file there):
Disk Utility: Burn failed, Tue Apr 27 19:42:11 2010
Disk Utility: Burn sense: 3/73/03 Medium Error, Power calibration area error
Disk Utility: Burn error: 0x8002006D The disc can't be burned; it might be incompatible with this disc drive. Please try a different brand of disc, or try burning at a slower speed.
Well, from a blog it was reported by someone having this same issue. This person used the Philips DVD Cleaner and after that it started working again.
Since I had tried every suggestion including buying Verbatim DVD+R DL I figured I might give this a chance. Now I could still burn on a regular DVD+RW but my understanding is that issues would occur first with Dual layer disks. So I bought the Memorex DVD Lens Cleaner and popped it in there. After spinning for a little bit it would come back out so I redid about 3 to 4 times figuring that as long as it is spinning it will be cleaning the lens. After that I tried burning a DVD+R DL again and low and behold, the burn was successful.
Now this burn was on TDK DVD+R DL and not even on the Verbatim which according to everything I've read are the best and should be bought to prevent coasters.
I hope this helps anyone with this particular error (power calibration error) in solving the burning of DVDs. Although my issue was with DL, I'm sure it would help as well when CDs or DVDs are failing to burn purely because it is the same type of error.
On the blog it mentioned that although the superdrive has a little cover, anytime one puts a DVD or CD in some dust from the cover can be transferred to the inside and come on the lens.
Note, this was on Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on a Late 2008 Macbook Pro but my iMac G5 Ambient with Leopard (latest version of 10.5.x) had no issues burning a DVD+R DL either. I used Disk Utility to burn and when I popped in the DVD I pushed ignore when it asked what to do.
